"I hear you're such a lazy bird, You cannot build a ; Perhaps you could, if you would try— We ought to do our best. The little bird that told me this Suspected something worse,— That you neglect your little ones, And put them out to nurse. Oh, Cuckoo! if this story's true, I think you're much to blame. Then talk no more about yourself; Go, hide yourself, for shame!"

"We had been dressing the wee lassie one day is a graceful fairy-like of Aunt Ellen's devising, and maternal pride gave utterance to some (foolish) remarks about the child's appearance. Very sweetly came the rebuke from childhood's wisdom. "Yes, but it was very good of God to make me pretty.""

"Winds are raging fierce and high, Lurid lightnings wreathe the sky, Thunders roll and night is nigh, Ships 'mid storm-toss'd breakers lie At the ocean's will. Little ones there are who weep, Wives who weary vigils keep, When all else have gone to sleep. Father! to yon angry deep "Say Thou, Peace, be still.""

"... The Corbie (or Raven) is sacred to the All-Father. The Katyogle (or Owl) is consecrated to the goddess of wisdom. ... I have too much respect for the Corbie and Katyogle to dwell in detail upon their . I care not for their "," according to the scientist. The and species to which they belong influence me not one whit. Why—when I know on the authority of a Shetland witch, that the Corbie can assume any form he pleases, and that the Katyogle is the inhabitant of another world in disguise–why should I trouble my spirit with assigning to either a place in the Darwinian circle?"

"An incantation against nightmare was once used over me by old Mam-Kirsty famed for her witchcraft."

"(Chapter 1)"

"Can't you keep this bloody place tidy?""

"That's Africa for you, eh? Trouble-free sex and tranquillizers. What do they call it? Post-pill paradise or something. Load of nonsense. Never seen a more neurotic, glum bunch in my life.""

"I turned off Sunset Boulevard and drove up Micheltoreno to the site. The day was cloudy and an erratic and nervy wind rattled the leaves of the palmettos that the contractor had planted along the roadside. As I pulled into the curb at number 2265 I saw the old man""

"It was a long journey back to Walter's farm, which lay near the foot of Kilimanjaro in British East Africa. First there was the coastal steamer from Dar to Tanga, and then a day's journey from Tanga to Moshi on the Northern Railway, followed by a further day's wagon ride across the border to B.E.A. and his won farm near the small town and former mission station of Taveta."

"There are so many hypochondriacs out here. I think Murray can spot them a mile off.""

"I want you to get to know Murray because I want you to bribe him.""

"(Part One, Chapter Four)"

"I know he never loved me, but that, as far as I am concerned, is of little importance. He did not love me because, quite simply, I was a constant reminder of his loss.""

"Actually I can't stand the man. Sanctimonious, Calvinistic, so-and-so. Totally unsympathetic -can't think why he became a doctor - hectoring, bullying-sort of moral storm-trooper.""

"Philip looked at me. "I was going to ask you to dinner tonight, but now that I've seen your lunch I guess you won't be hungry.'"

"There were things about him that I found potently intriguing, but if I looked too closely at those vivid encrusted spots my scalp literally began to crawl and my eyes water.""

"My maid Innocence. She's dead.'"

"(Part One, Chapter One, p. 19)"

"He saw that she treated her marriage to his father as a relentless challenge, an unending struggle under adverse conditions to get her own way. At first this manifested itself only in the naming of her children, but lately, as she had come to know her enemy, or as he had grown more senile and eccentric, evidence of her own personality long-suppressed came increasingly to the fore."

"(Chapter 2)"

"Dear Faye, I feel a little fitter today. Perhaps everything will be fine after all ..."

"I have no idea why he did not like me. Normally, with an age gap of six years, an older brother will treat a younger with fond enthusiasm - a favorite sidekick, an instant fan, almost like a pet - but Thompson's attitudes then, as far as I remember, were either indifference or irritation.""

"Religions are many, reason is one, we are all brothers."

"Some temptations cannot be fought. One must close one's mind and fly from them."

"You are extraordinarily attractive to women. And your greatest charm is that you do not realise it."

"Hell is that state where one has ceased to hope."

"Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley. But always, if we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us."

"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength."

"Even if my country remains at war with yours . . . remember ... I am not your enemy."

"The first major Scottish novelist since Walter Scott."

"Gray is in my estimation a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today."

"I asked the headmaster of literature, "Why are there so many headmasters and so few poets? Is it easier for you to train your own kind than ours?" He said, "No. The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.""

"Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation."

"A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb."

"This slip has been inserted by mistake."

"She writes well and concisely, and this has tended to obscure the psychological superficiality and sheer petty malice of her content."

"One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full."

"It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles."

"New York, home of the vivisectors of the mind, and of the mentally vivisected still to be reassembled, of those who live intact, habitually wondering about their states of sanity, and home of those whose minds have been dead, bearing the scars of resurrection."

"It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist."

"To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion."

"I am putting old heads on your young shoulders," Miss Brodie had told them at that time, "and all my pupils are the crème de la crème."

"Her sentences march under a harsh sun that bleaches color from them but bestows a peculiar, invigorating, Pascalian clarity."

"The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion."

"Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life."

"A life like mine annoys most people; they go to their jobs every day, attend to things, give orders, pummel typewriters, and get two or three weeks off every year, and it vexes them to see someone else not bothering to do these things and yet getting away with it, not starving, being lucky as they call it."

"Where the pools are bright and deep Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and o'er the lea That's the way for Billy and me."

"Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much, as consigning them to eternal damnation."

"Man mind yourselve is the first commandment."